Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Olympic Luge Marble Painting

We try to limit TV time in our house during the weekdays, but with the Olympic coverage Big Brother and I couldn't resist watching some of the events late this afternoon. Big Brother was instantly interested in the women's luge singles. He had lots of questions about the sport, many which I couldn't answer, but it did inspire a pre-dinner project.

To begin with I cut about three feet off a clean pool noodle and then split it lengthwise down the center. We collected some of the marbles from Big Brother's room and our washable poster paint. I taped a large sheet of white paper to the floor.

We placed the top of the chutes onto Big Brother's favorite stool and the bottoms so they rested on the paper. We added some paint to the top of the chutes and let the marbles roll down. They rolled across the paper, leaving paint tracks as they went.

After a couple of runs we decided to raise the chutes a little higher onto one of the chairs. Big Brother also started experimenting with different sized marbles.

The marbles started to go a little further, which made me really glad we'd set this up on the kitchen floor as the paint did start to go off the paper a little.

Big Brother decided to raise the chutes even higher, which made the marbles go even further. We definitely could have explored some force & motion properties, but he was having too much fun to interrupt him.

He would have kept going, but it was time for dinner so we had to stop, with a promise we'd do it again another day!